Do you expect to pay eight times as much as you have in previous years? Bishop Harry R. Jackson says that could happen to some unless Congress stands up to the insane regulations on coal put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. read more

Whatever a family’s beliefs about marriage and sexuality, they are matters about which parents must clearly teach their children, not send them into the world to figure it out on their own, says Bishop Harry R. Jackson. read more

Bishop Harry Jackson says LGBT activists have learned that money and bullying tactics can buy you a few black leaders—some pastors even—but they cannot buy you the conscience of black America. read more

Last week (May 23 and 24), 175 Christian leaders from around the
country gathered for a 24-hour marriage summit in the Washington,
D.C., metro area. The small group represented nearly 100,000
individual churches and several denominations. The purpose of the
summit was to strategize how we would respond to President Obama’s
endorsement of same-sex marriage.

The group, which included pastors, community activists and
denominational leaders, decided to send out a group letter to the
president and to develop a pro-biblical marriage resource that could
be used around the country.

The summit culminated with a press conference in which black,
Hispanic, white and Asian leaders stood shoulder-to-shoulder. We
wanted to let the nation know that Christian leaders will not be
silent on the issue of same-sex marriage. We also wanted to ask the
president and the legislators of both parties to convey to us their
specific strategies.
read more

The president’s decision to endorse same-sex marriage is a great
disappointment for many people. His statement—which he announced Wednesday—is of great concern to
those who still believe in traditional marriage.

These people fall into two major categories—those whose belief
systems are informed by their spiritual background and those who have
been convinced that redefining marriage will be a horrible social
experiment that will further weaken America’s declining structure.

Many in the faith community have suspected for some time that the
president’s announcement was coming. It seems as though the
administration feels that this moment will bolster the same-sex
marriage movement from the crushing
defeat it experienced in North Carolina. read more

I remember sitting at the dinner table with my parents at 8 years
old. During that season, the “no elbows on the table” rule was in
full force. In addition, my mother constantly chided me for using
slang as opposed to proper English. Those three to four years seemed
like hell on earth. Nonetheless, years later, I could trace my
success in school to my family dinner table and a few great teachers.

My parents always said, “For a black man to do half as well, he
must be twice as good!” For them, education was almost a “sacred
privilege,” which had been denied my ancestors because of the black
and Native American social status. Today, I am shocked by the almost
unfathomable swing from my black community’s sense of excellence
and purpose to an entitlement mentality.

Not long ago, both The Washington Post and The New York
Times reported a growing national trend: Black students are
suspended and expelled from school at two to five times the rate of
white students. Both articles highlighted the unintended bias of
teachers and administrators, zero-tolerance school discipline
policies and school leadership styles as possible causes for this
development—and undoubtedly they are contributing factors.

But I wonder whether forcing teachers to sit through another
mandatory sensitivity seminar or lobbying to relax school discipline
policies will improve the long-term prospects of black students in
America? read more

As we mourn Trayvon Martin’s death, we should remember another black teenager killed just four years ago.

On March 2, 2008, high school senior Jamiel Shaw was gunned down in
Los Angeles. According to police, Shaw was walking home when two men he
had never met jumped out of a car and one shot him. A talented football
player, Shaw had scholarship offers from Stanford University and
Rutgers. The man who shot him was Petro Espinoza, an illegal immigrant
and member of a gang with a history of extensive violence against
African-Americans. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Espinoza had been released from jail 28 hours before the shooting, after serving time for an earlier [violent] offense.”

Why did the nation not mourn Jamiel the way we are mourning Trayvon?
Was it because the media knew immediately that Shaw’s killers were
Latino, not white? read more

I often am asked questions by the
media on choices the government makes about our society. It is an anomaly to me to see the drift in government to control
in micro-detail certain aspects of our society, and yet determine to
be hands-off on other key issues. Recently the American public was given an
edict that affects many religious nonprofit organizations.

The debate over the new Health and Human Services regulations,
which require all employers to pay 100 percent of the cost of
contraception including abortion-inducing chemicals, has been rightly
cast as an intrusion on religious liberty. Opponents of such
regulations are no more advocating a ban on contraceptives than
vegetarian restaurants are advocating a ban on meat. They are simply
saying that companies shouldn’t have to pay for services to which
they object for moral reasons.

But black Americans in particular would be wise to pay close
attention, since the age old contraception battle has special
historical significance to them. For more than a century,
“reproductive services” have been special code words for the
constant, silent effort of the powerful to control black breeding.
And this control has often come in the form of a “helping hand.” read more